Devil's Side
by Val-Creative
Summary: (Episode 7-centric.) Lyra arrives at his doorstep without Roger.


**.**

**.**

A man on his knees is a man who has lost.

His pride. His convictions. Everything dearest to him.

That everything — _everything_, everything good and pure Asriel helped bring into their corrupt world — she's been his everything even if Lyra had never known this. She has come on her own, walking the ground-floor in timid, little steps and gazing in wonder.

His hands clutch roughly onto the sides of Lyra's head, forcing her forward, and she squeaks. "You have to turn around!" Asriel demands hoarsely, tears burning in his eyes. Those sensations of agitation and fear climb up Asriel's throat, flooding his mouth with the warm, noxious taste of bile, making it harder to draw in air. "You have to turn around and leave! _I did not send for you_!"

Lyra's wonderstuck expression chases out into one of deep perplexity. She gazes at Asriel with an underlying layer of fear. Fear of him. Asriel can feel each of her small, gloved fingers take the mindful care to pry away his hands. "I came here to free you…"

Asriel's chest tightens. He tries to speak, leaving his mouth to hang wide-open as Pantalaimon's silvery-sleek ermine head pokes right out of Lyra's collar. His teeny black eyes on Lyra's father contemplatively, without any trace of mistrust or apprehension, before staring expectantly at Lyra. Stelmaria lets out a thunderously loud cawl, as if she's stricken with pain.

"No, no—you have to get out—" he insists, mumbling this, gripping hard into her cream-coloured parka and tugging.

"What—"

Lyra's voice sounds so soft and unsure.

She stumbles, helpless to the weight of her own confusion and Asriel's strength as he drags open the entrance's hatch with a grunt. A burst of snow-flecked wind hits their faces. Cold so fierce it goes into their bones. Asriel flings her out, watching for a split second as his daughter, alive and well, lands onto her bottom with a sharp yelp.

It must be this way — it must, it must, he repeats to himself, sealing the hatch. She must stay alive.

For a moment, all Asriel can hear is the soft, constant hissing of the naphtha lantern hooked above him. The shrill of the wintry storm approaching in the distance. Stelmaria's growl-huffs and her nails on the unpolished stone. His own ragged breathing.

_Lord Asriel!_

Disbelief pricks him. He's shown her nothing but indifference and emotional isolation for most of their lives, to protect _her_, to protect _himself _— and yet, Lyra will not move on. This isn't how this was supposed to happen. She isn't supposed to become sentimental. Lyra bangs her fists onto the hatch-door, unable to rattle the steel-and-iron welded frame, hollering out for him.

_LORD ASRIEL!_

His palms flatten to the hatch's icy surface. Asriel leans himself into it, pressing his forehead down. Every bit of noise coming from Lyra, every pounding of her hands, every syllable, feels like it's reverberating and doubling inside him. Gutting him apart.

_LOOORD ASRIEEEEEEL!_

Blue eyes overflow his tears. A choked and quiet sob escapes him. Asriel refuses to move on too, just like his little girl, straining against the powerful momentum of his daemon clamping her jaws into the back of Asriel's pullover, tugging him backwards. He cannot do this. He cannot sacrifice Lyra to her death. He cannot step away from his work now and abandon his mission.

Thorold races down the stone-steps, his features whitening.

"What in the devil's name you doing!?" he yells to Asriel, snatching onto the hatch's crank. The structure flings open.

Lyra barrels in, fast, with Pantalaimon as an arctic tern soaring over her head.

She runs into Thorold's arms, shuddering and shivering, visibly crying. Thorold's daemon ruffs to Asriel's daemon, snarling her canine-like teeth.

Asriel doesn't remember a time where his manservant looked this enraged towards him. Thorold's patience and understanding and temperance has been paramount to their working and personal relationship. Endless. Important during any hardships. He wants what Asriel wants to achieve, but it's over. This is where their objectives must divide themselves.

Lyra peeks over ruefully to the man she glorified and admired since her memory formed, to Asriel broken up in his shame.

**.**

**.**

He needed a child.

One has come.

Asriel remains in his laboratory, gladly burying himself in his unfinished experimental documentation, organizing his logs and journal entries by hand into files, while Thorold sees to Lyra's needs. It's what he has always done. Someone else bears the responsibility for his daughter and it _should_ have been him. If their circumstances were _different_ from the start… he might have…

One of the glass beakers slips from Lyra's clumsy, child-like fingers, ricocheting onto the open-grate floor. Asriel notices her too late, startling to reality and nearly dropping his magnifying scope. Stelmaria jumps back, rumble-hissing, her tail fluffing.

"S'rry…" Lyra mumbles, genuinely seeming so. She clutches a white field mouse Pantalaimon to herself.

He ignores her nervousness, and Lyra herself, glancing down to his laboratory's corner-table, rummaging through papers.

She's still in her reindeer-skin parka dyed in a light cream, unbuttoned and hanging open. A pair of dark canvas overalls. Boots made of reindeer and bearded seal and lined with wolverine-fur. But without the silk muffler and Lyra's woolen, burgundy cap.

Asriel has each detail burned into his mind, suffering through the silence as Lyra goes rueful once more, turning around.

"Lyra," he says gruffly, eyeing her as she frowns and hesitates. "Come with me."

**.**

**.**

It's much later in the evening. Asriel shows Lyra to one of the more private rooms for conversation, solemnly observing her.

This place is a headland facing the northern direction, solidly built and wide. He expects Lyra imagined something far more grandiose with carpets and leather chairs and polished, quartzite floors leading to halls full of coal hearths burning a many splendid fires. That was not the case. Asriel was able to obtain a number of expensive real glass panes for his windows and skylights from Iofur, but the Svalbard bears themselves had to carve out the stone foundation. Irregularly shaped corridors. The main area lofted by steel-reinforcements and walkways constructed of black, gleaming grates.

He asks her about her journey, and Lyra explains about the gyptians and Mrs. Coulter and befriending the new king, showing him her alethiometer, letting him examine it with painstaking interest. Asriel knew of them plenty enough, but never held one for himself. She gives no indication of being told Asriel was her father, or that Mrs. Coulter was her mother.

Asriel's thumbs run along the smoothed, grey cover of Lyra's alethiometer. In a way, doing this calms him.

"I frightened you."

She nods at his acknowledgement. Lyra's footsteps creak against the wooden floorboards. Without the anbaric quality of the lamps, he can only glimpse her in shadows and the muted, colourful glow of the Aurora streaming in.

"… I shouldn't have done that," Asriel concludes, tightening his face. "That wasn't my intention."

Lyra fiddles with her overall-buckles, undoing them. "You looked scared," she whispers.

"I was thinking about what must have happened. For you to be here." It's not a lie. So many factors contributed to Lyra's presence right besides him now, kept her alive, and it feels truly like Fate condemning him, mocking him for his involvement in this. "You were safe. You were safest at Jordan College even with the Master who was planning to kill me."

"But I'm not safe here with you?"

It's a reasonable question. Asriel cannot fault her for that. He thinks of the top of the mountain, and all of his wire-charged equipment, and the cage waiting. Waiting for his sacrifice — no matter the emotional cost, no matter how he dares to love.

"No," Asriel mumbles, suddenly fearful. "No."

He cannot bear to look at Lyra's worried expression on him. How she's overflowing with trust and fervour and notions too precious for someone like Asriel.

Stelmaria gives him a low, comforting purr, rubbing her head to Asriel's hip and setting her chin to his thigh.

He recovers after a long, tensed minute, not moving from his chair and inhaling deeply. "The Magisterium is coming. For all of us." Asriel's tone sounds calm enough. His fingers flex, trailing into his snow leopard's fur and increasing her purring. "We will be leaving shortly for the gyrocopter so dress warmly."

Lyra nods again, her mouth quirking into a smile.

There's reflections of _pink-purple-teal_ in her dark, messy hair, glowing against Lyra's cheek, as if already trying to claim her. Asriel's throat swallows hard.

"Try to get some rest until then…"

She slips apart the buckles of her overalls, leaving the dully patterned chemise underneath. Asriel resists the want of grazing his knuckles to the pale and soft-looking skin on her jaw. "Will you go?" Lyra asks. Ah, yes, he told about Dust and creating a bridge to other worlds. How they existed.

(But not what it will _take_ to reach them.)

"Yes," Asriel finds himself speaking monotonously. "I hope you'll join me." Lyra's brows furrow. He reaches for her bare hands, grasping them warmly and bringing her in. Their noses nearly brush. Asriel's gaze unnaturally soft. "We'll do this together. You and I. We could rebuild worlds and destroy those who oppose us. Would you like that?"

Lyra doesn't answer him. Her smile returns, growing, brightening the hollowed spaces inside Asriel.

**.**

**.**

There's no time left.

Asriel drapes a waterproof cape made of semitransparent seal intestine around her. Proper cold-weather clothing. Lyra pulls on silk gloves under her big fur-lined mittens. The higher they get, the colder and more strenuous to breathe it will become.

He finishes bundling up, locating her woolen, knitted cap, passing it to Lyra. "Listen to Thorold and stay close to me, alright?"

"Alright," Lyra murmurs shyly, her ears flushed-red. She yanks on her cap.

Neither of them pay mind to Pantalaimon scurrying up to Stelmaria, going up on his back legs, curiously sniffing when the snow leopard daemon croons and lowers herself. Stelmaria's tongue laps affectionately over Pantalaimon's ermine head, washing him. And at the same moment, Asriel lowers his head, grasping Lyra's nape and presses his lips to the top of her burgundy cap.

His heart is a fortress and Lyra has scaled every impossible blackstone wall like she was meant for it. Like they belonged to her.

**.**

**.**

Thorold volunteers to guard them, to hold his position with Asriel's rifle and his own until the Magisterium locates him. Until he's gunned down every single one of their enemies. He's too old and feeble to climb past the midpoint, and Asriel suspected this.

Lyra quivers with anguish, hugging Asriel's manservant as Thorold shushes her kindly.

"Please, sir…" he says, his eyes meeting Asriel's troubled gaze. "Please take care of Lyra in the new worlds you shall face…"

"I shall."

Asriel has not lied to him. Not once. Not in the thirty or so years Asriel has known him, shared his table and his research and failings with Thorold. Not even at the impending awareness of Thorold willing to die for both him and Lyra, already knowing he could never undo what's begun.

They depart, giving one last look to Thorold and his daemon obscured by the harsh, deep snowfall, as the older man waves cheerfully one-handed.

**.**

**.**

Stemaria prowls the craggy, ice-blistered rocks, leading ahead as another hour vanishes. Her uncertainty resonates in Asriel.

Up on a steep, mountainous ridge, Lyra climbs alongside her father, keeping a good pace despite being so small and lightweight. Pantalaimon scampers after her as a pearly-white arctic fox, hopping from place to place.

That's when the ice shelf crackles. She mistakenly throws her weight onto it, falling backwards off the cliff without her daemon. Her arms thrown out.

For the briefest of seconds, relief wells inside him. Drowning out the panic and terror.

Asriel indulges in this feeling, moving forward to her, and then snaps to himself, gripping onto Lyra's outstretched hand. He heaves her against him, pulling them towards stable rock-ground, Lyra's arms clutched shakily round his middle. Asriel says her name like his very own psalm, rocking her gently, holding her.

"We're almost there…"

**.**

**.**

Fear is a constant. Fear tells him when to retreat.

It overwhelms Asriel's instincts, sharpening them to a fine-edge blade.

He allows Lyra to roam the mountain-top, eager as can be, as Asriel switches on the battery-operated generators, throwing off their snow-laden covers and no longer needing the guidance of his anbaric-powered torch. Lyra glimpses up to the heavenly auroral lights, filling with a sense of peace under their magnificence. She listens to their beckoning — the alluring, siren mystery.

The equipment hums on. Asriel gasps, hurrying to open the cage-grate to his device and at a loss. He doesn't know what to do. He has what he needed, but this, _this _— Lyra is _his child_. How could anyone ever be so heartless? And how could _anyone_—?

Asriel turns sideways, his expression going vacant. Lyra has finally noticed him by a cruder, ice-shelled version of Bolvangar's invention, coming to a standstill. She's incredulous. Her dark eyes brim with recognition, wandering over to the familiar, silvery blade positioned high between the two interconnected cages, before mounting in slow-churning, furious horror.

"Lyra," he murmurs, somewhere between a gentle reprimanding and beseeching.

She's not a coward. Not his daughter. Lyra runs without getting in arm's length, her teeth exposing as she pants through them. Asriel waits in grim defeat, quicker and stronger than her when he seizes Lyra out of nowhere, hoisting her into the air.

A loud, awful screech pierces the night. She thrashes and screeches with so much emotion until it feels like Asriel's heart might bleed. Stelmaria overpowers Pantalaimon, using her fangs to pick him up the scruff of his white arctic fur. He dangles helplessly, crying out high-pitched like a terrified, whimpery animal. Asriel can feel the lamenting in his daemon's steadfastness.

"LET ME GO! LET GO OF ME—_LET ME GO_—!"

He dumps Lyra into the furthest cage, heedful to not bang her head or any of her limbs.

"Lyra!" Pantalaimon yelps and weeps, already trapped in his own cage as Asriel shuts it, locking them both in, activating the barrier. Lyra's daemon scratches frantically at the mesh separating them, tearing in with his ermine-nails.

"_PAN_!" Lyra shriek-sobs, clawing and thrusting her fingers through the littlest holes, wanting to feel him. "_PAN_!"

Stelmaria growls out uneasily, pacing herself behind Asriel. He mutters to her, firmly snatching onto the handgrip. Asriel closes his eyes, breathing so hard, then pulls until his self-made guillotine bears down. Lyra cuts herself off with an open-mouthed, astonished moan, when it descends towards her. She loses strength and collapses onto her elbows. Her head drops into the fine, glittering snow.

He's killing her, Asriel realises the truth — and it's enough dread and restless guilt to stop him.

_They should have fell._

He should have stepped off the mountainous ice shelf when it broke, plummeting with Lyra into the chasm of darkness and snow.

Lyra manages to drag herself up after a long, heart-stuttering moment, facing Asriel. She kicks at the cage's door and bangs her fists, renewing her screeches and bawling in exhaustion and pain and despair. Asriel forces himself to witness this, mouthing Lyra's name. Hot tears spill down into his beard.

_This is his fault._

He sought so long to keep Lyra from him. Keep her from worshiping and needing him like a child would their beloved guardian. It was to protect her against Asriel's investigation into Dust and his rebellion. But he failed. Asriel willingly spend time with her at Jordan College, learned about her daily tasks and lessons, encouraged her and mentored her and promised her things he could not deliver. Lyra soaked up what little attention he spared, truly believing one day they could be a family. Someday. And _someday_… that's what Asriel naively wanted. When he was at last victorious and freed her and all worlds.

Asriel's leather-gloved fingers clench to the blade's handgrip. He uses both of his arms this time, pushing down until sweat pours down the back of Asriel's neck. His bright blue eyes fixed themselves to his walrus-hide boots. He's the coward.

There was never having both Lyra and the war against the Authority and the Magisterium.

_FATHER!_

Lyra's devastated, pleading voice blares in his ears.

The blade creaks and stalls, unable to move an inch. Asriel hangs his weight onto it, his fingers aching, going boneless.

She knew. Of course _she knew_.

Asriel glances to a pink-cheeked Lyra through the cage, his tears filming and cooling on his eyelashes. She stares up at him sobbing rigidly, no longer crying herself, tears dazzling-bright like icicles to Lyra's cheeks. Asriel's lips twitch at the corners, grinning and quaking from his sobs.

Lyra, forlorn and brave and solemn in her grief, lays her hands flat to the cage's mesh — as he did to the hatch-door keeping her out.

She shuts her eyes.

"Thank you," Asriel whispers this like _I love you_, shutting his own and hanging on tighter when Stelmaria bounds over. She hauls her paws onto the blade's handgrip. The combined weight unsticks the mechanism, smoothly cutting the space between the cages.

**.**

**.**

A pure bolt of energy rises into the air quickly, rupturing apart the very clouds, deafening loud.

**.**

**.**

He gazes skyward, mesmorised. The colours of the Aurora meld together, _purple-pink-turquoise-lime-orange-indigo_. As they form, swirling and thinning into an open portal, Asriel turns back with all of the warmth and excitement receding out of him.

Stelmaria nudges her whiskered muzzle to Pantalaimon's cage, letting out a distraught and heartsick noise. There's nothing left of him but a glimmer of Dust captured away by the bitter, blowing wind. Or perhaps it was the tiniest flicker of snow-speck. Lyra, however, slumps against a cage-wall, unmoving. Her hood drapes over her face.

"Lyra," Asriel mumbles to her, as if expecting his daughter to answer, scrambling to free her. "Lyra."

He unlocks it, removing her from this prison.

Asriel lowers her down, pushing the hood back and peeling off his gloves with some difficulty due to his severe trembling. The rosiness has left her skin. She's the colour of nightghasts, and twice as icy. Asriel's knuckles graze her jaw, attempting to rouse her. He begins a series of chest-pumps, grunting out, her little body writhing. Circulation — she needs it, and the air in her lungs. Asriel holds his tear-dampened mouth against hers, puffing into her. "Lyra, come back," he breathes harshly, pumping again. "Come back to me."

His snow leopard daemon blinks her tawny eyes.

"Asriel," she murmurs in concern.

_"_No_—"_

"She isn't—"

_"I WON'T HEAR IT!"_ Asriel bellows, going hysterical, shuddering. His blue eyes widen. _"LYRA! GODS DAMN YOU__—LYRA!"_

**.**

**.**

It's another several moments, or even hours, before Asriel feels himself giving in, no longer attempting to resuscitate her. He bends over Lyra, tasting a hint of salt and Asriel's own blazing heat on her lips. There's nothing left now. Asriel mouths a faint, loving kiss there.

Lyra — _Lyra_, eyes shut, her face lacking expression and relaxed. Her dark strands filigreed in white powdery snow.

Asriel hears the sweet, enthralling trill of the Northern portal, gathering Lyra into his arms. Cradling her. He cradled her like this to put her to bed, walking out of the Retiring Room, thinking of how frail and sweet-natured Lyra seemed asleep. So opposite of herself. Asriel cradled her as a baby, twelve and a half years younger and tossing aside the smoking pistol. Edward Coulter's blood streaked Asriel's clothing and hairline. He shushed Lyra's wailing, kissing her tiny, round face until she gurgled joyfully.

He killed for her. Asriel would have killed as many as it took. And still he _failed her_.

More tears burn into existence.

Asriel doesn't sob or wail out for reprieve. Lyra took it all with her. His light, his love_._ His life. But he cannot quit, no. Asriel will defy the stars, and their cruel alignment with a heartless, mocking Fate.

Death _and_ Fate, _and_ the Authority, will perish by his hand.

He lifts Lyra, marching for the portal, her legs slung over Asriel's right arm. Her head lolls.

"It's finally done," Stelmaria rumbles, lifting her great, silvery head.

Asriel can feel the summery, fragrant breeze of a new world drifting over him. Lyra's dark bangs hover off her forehead. He coddles her, readjusting Lyra to him, setting her head over Asriel's shoulder and holding his lips to her snowy, dark hair. He will carry her into this war as a testament to the sacrifice Asriel chose to make. A real, true sacrifice for the greater good. An _unforgivable_ thing.

"We'll do this together…" he whispers down to Lyra, never tearing his eyes from her as Asriel steps through.

**.**

**.**


End file.
